You guys should hire the guys from The Redditor and make that magazine for REAL!!! It could bring in new advertisers and even a new audience for reddit. Their work is proven to be outstanding, just check out any issue over at www.theredditor.com

When you said "their work is proven to be outstanding" I thought you were some ad-spamming dimwit, but I read some issues of the magazine as I was curious, and I really enjoyed it. Keep up the work, whoever makes this.

It often happens when anyone mentions supporting a commercial venture at Reddit. In this case, they are biting off the hand that is feeding them good stuff. If they actually looked at an issue, then I'd be upset, but I'm sure they haven't. Here's a thumbs up to the Redditor makers -- and yes, it would be a good idea for Reddit to try it out - I'd subscribe.

Need to be careful with that Controller position. Just finishing up my CPA Exam and one of the main points to avoid fraud or theft from an employee is to remember the ARC, separate Authority Responsibility and Control...

CPA here. This guy is spot on. We all want to hope that the people we hire will be trustworthy employees but your current description of the controller position would allow anybody with an accounting degree to commit fraud without breaking a sweat.

Just one, very simple example: This person would be in charge of Bank Recs, AP, and Journal postings. Anybody with an accounting degree knows this is the first type of control deficiency you learn about. This will allow the person to create any sort of dummy AP while covering it up through their reconciliations and journal entries.

There are control deficiencies all over that job description, but that is the easiest to understand.

All Reddit CPAs smelled blood in the water when they saw a finance opening job at a small tech company! Haha CPA here as well and these were my exact thoughts. But given the size of the company, auditors will give you a pass on the lapse of controls. However to have one person control all of these aspects is just asking for embezzlement.

That's why you need a trustworthy person in the position. I know, no one is fully trustworthy. But, in a small operation, you have to trust someone.

I work as the controller for a small publishing company, and let me tell you, I could line my pockets hand over fist if I so desired. I effectively have no supervision, as the only person knowledgeable enough to supervise me is the CEO, and she has me because she's too busy to do that.

Yeah, I don't think a lot of these people understand that textbook examples of perfect control aren't really possible in many companies. You can't separate responsibilities between people who don't exist and small companies are not going to hire three people to do the work of one just to separate their duties.

When I worked for large corporations, my areas of responsibility were always quite narrow and I needed authorizations and approvals for everything. Small companies don't have this luxury/pain in the ass, depending on your perspective.

I think even Reddit.com has a small staff, so how many could redditgifts.com have?

Segregation of duties is the most effective control, but of course it is not possible in a small organization. OP and all the other posters didn't mention anything about segregating the duties, we just wanted to contribute by pointing out that this job description could be stuck in an audit textbook as the background to a question like "How should a small company with this description go about improving their controls?"

I am in auditing and yes, it will be in my nature to point out a control deficiency. I'm not screaming for an audit or wagging my finger at reddit for seeking someone to do all this work. I like the work I do and it isn't to often that something pops up on reddit where CPAs/Auditors can have something useful to say that comes from their work.

Ok, now that accounting is on the front page, can we please take a moment and discuss the best possible use of an accounting degree? Anyone have an awesome job and want to share? I work for a large manufacturing company with lots of cool robots and manufacturing cells. But the work and office environment quite dry.

Well, I like my work but there is nothing that is very exciting. Most people would describe it as quite dry.

An accounting degree is very well rounded and I may be a bit biased, but it is the only degree that falls under the umbrella of "Business" that I would recommend getting because it teaches a marketable skill.

Every company needs accountants, but right now there is a serious glut of accounting majors coming out of school. I think it is the product of all the "Top 10 majors by starting salary!" type articles. This makes the CPA certification all the more important. The CPA used to be something that only those looking to go into public accounting (doing audit and tax work for corporations) but just about every accounting/corporate finance related job posting I see has a "CPA Required/Preferred" somewhere in it.

I work in public accounting doing audit work for large corps. It has a sort of puzzle feel to it as your job is basically to act as a detective by confirming financial statement information and assessing the various aspects of the companies financial controls.

Tax work is very akin to law as it is very researched based. You work on filing the various tax forms required from corporations and they expect you to find all the loop-holes you can (it may be dirty, but it's the tax people's job) to save them as much money as possible.

Advisory is kind of a new field that popped up after the Sarbanes-Oxley act prevented accounting firms from doing consulting work for their clients. It is a huge umbrella and can encompass anything from IT consulting to Mergers & Acquisitions (and various other large transactions) advising.

All of these things require the CPA (save for a few Advisory fields, but it is still preferred) which everyone who has taken it will tell you sucks. It is 4 parts and I have seen every situation from a person studying 200+ hours for a section and failing to someone being able to cram for 5 days/section and pass.

A vast majority of people in public accounting will tell you that their goal is to use their experience to spring board them into a well-paying corporate finance role (or various other accounting positions that aren't public accounting - not-for-profit is another popular choice). Public accounting is useful for this because of the exposure you get working with clients and the knowledge you gain from examining such a wide variety of the aspects of a business.

Feel free to ask me other questions if you want to know more. Hope this helps.

I'm an accountant at a Tax firm. Absolutely love it. Nothing like getting a front row seat into individuals and Business' financials and then being made to feel like a genius for giving them sound financial advice that is really just common sense and quite easy to learn and understand. I also like it because it's a very independent job. I'm an very independent person. You manage your clients and go about your day but for the Monday morning meeting that only lasts 5 minutes because everyone else in the firm shares your personalty. "This is lame, Let's go back to our offices and break in 30 to talk sports and politics".

Edit: Oh, and becoming an Enrolled Agent is a nice alternative to the CPA License.

Yeah, I'm a Controller with all those responsibilities (and more) and no direct oversight. No one wants to listen to me when I tell them I could empty the bank accounts, take a 'long weekend,' and no one would be the wiser until the next payroll bounced and the bank called.

I've actually outlined my plan of how I would do it to my assistant. Even with her knowing how I would do it, she would be pretty much helpless to stop me from doing it, as someone has to hold the keys. Even with her having some of them, I have to hold enough of them that to make it child's play.

You're right, but that's just not how it happens in small organisations. There won't even be a second person competent to do bank recs or whatever. If you're lucky someone in management will be savvy enough to pretend like he's reviewing bank recs and payroll. The reality is you're reliant on the bank controls and management having a good enough general idea about how the business is doing such that anything significant just has to look weird in the management accounts.

That and there's an accountant who looks at everything when they prepare the year end, in this case maybe the parent does something vaguely akin to internal audit.

Former auditor and CPA exam "applicant" if they hire the right controller then the first thing they would do is install a system with checks and balances in key spots. Dual signers over X dollars, wire initiation/authorization from separate users, check stock with log and reviewer signature for extraction of checks with numbers, monthly Vendor recs with new vendors over X dollars having a valid tax-id #. Bam done.

I imagine the Reddit headquarters to be like the New York Mad Magazine offices in The Simpsons; filled with anthropomorphic memes and gags. You'll be interviewed by Business Cat (who will ask if you're okay working overtime to try and catch the red dot), his assistant, Bad Luck Brian, will bring you coffee but trip and spill it on himself, and Human Resources is staffed by SRS mods.

I'm fully qualified for the programming position, but is relocation absolutely necessary? I live in the Baltimore-DC area and I would prefer not to move.

Edit:

Qualifications-
Programming for 5+ years with 3 years of Python and 1 year of Django experience. I've done everything from application to database to algorithm development.

Edit2:

So I don't really know why this got popular, but I sent them an e-mail with a bunch of questions I had including this one. I'm going to end up applying through their normal channels, so we'll see how this goes.

I may be wrong but you can't mixed two alcohols in a drink (with the exception of 1oz bitters) they can only serve 3.2% ABW beer (I might be wrong about this but I think Coors, Miller, Bud relabel their beer as ABW vs ABV to sell their beer in UT but it's the same).

Most jobs don't distinguish between accounting and finance degrees - if an employer were looking for an accountant, it would request a CPA, not an accounting major. I would chalk the discrepancy here up to reddit's lack of knowledge and experience in such matters. Everyone knows what an accounting major is - but what is a finance major?

Well, to give you an idea, when I was interning at places, I worked in Strategic Planning plotting long term growth for the company, including acquistions that involved a lot of cost-benefit analysis. I also worked in treasury management, which involved managing the company's payroll and figuring out what ultra short term investments to dump the company's cash reserves into (bank accounts don't really pay interest). Its more the active side of managing corporate money than the passive recording side, but there is a fair amount of overlap. A lot of finance people go into consulting, asset management, and financial planning, as well as analysis of accounting data.

Not to knock your job description and without knowing more about the size of reddits staff that accounting/finance job would be better broken up into at least 3 jobs.... Might I suggest splitting it into a payroll and accounts payable position and then a collections accounts receivable position. Then I would hire a manager with experience in both. So 1 manager and 2 entry level positions. Just advice because hiring 1 person for all of that is horrible internal controls and if your looking for "big business accounting" mixed with "small business" a 3 person department provides the right amount of checks and balances.... I'd apply but unfortunately I only have SOME of the experience your looking for but still like to give the advice to keep from huuuuuge problems

I work in finance and hate my life. I'm hugely underqualified for this job and live in New York. I'd be willing to do the Controller job for moving cost, minimum wage and stock options. Think about it. Please God.

E: I just remembered you have access to my entire post history. Nevermind. Good luck finding someone who isnt a scumbag.

I have a degree in English, creative writing from a private school in New England. I can't help you do anything.

I'm willing to work for $20 an hour, working my way from the top to a comfortable position in the middle of the pack so I don't stand out too much, but just enough so that you think you need me, you just don't know why, and you think you can't fire me because there's no one else who can do what I do because you, technically, don't know what I do because I do nothing.

Can someone provide me a link to a screenshot of the programming challenge? I'm bored at work and am not looking for a job but would like to give the programming challenge a shot anyhow. Stupid work blocking Reddit Blog for being a "Social Networking Site" >:O

HALO MY NAME IS MALEK MALIK, I AM PRINCE FROM NIGERIA. MY DEAR FATHER KING KUFU THE THIRD HAS DIED AND LEFT ME THIS ARTICLE TO JOIN THE REDDIT CLUB AS DIGITAL WRITER. I REQUIRE FUNDS TO ATTEND MY INTERVIEW. YOU WILL FIND MY RESUME IS MUCH HANDSOME AND ATTRACTIVE TO THE REDDIT CLUB. PLEASE FORWARD ME $800,000 SO I MAY MAKE TRANSIT TO THE YOUNITED STATES TO INTERVIEW THE REDDIT CLUB

Dammit, I won't have my degree until next year! I fit everything else... except for understanding big company accounting. My 10 years experience have been with smaller companies. Ah, who am I kidding? I've never been an accountant, just a clerk and a data entry guy. I wouldn't know how to run the department myself. Funny how close I am to this job (including location) and yet how far.

Job sounds huge for one person though, can I interest you in a data entry-slash-accounting clerk guy?

Finance professional here. The job description doesn't really resemble that of a financial controller, more of someone who would work for a controller, like a general accountant or a financial analyst (posting invoices, making collection calls etc is something you would get a new grad to do). Perhaps the pay is more in line with a controller though if the person is expected to do everything there is to do in a normal accounting department. Just my $0.02.

Is reddit in need of someone to "test view" reddit for them. I was thinking maybe, reddit could pay me to browse reddit just to ya know, make sure it's working. When it's not working I'll shoot you guys an email telling you it's not. I was thinking, $60,000 a year with quarterly bonuses and benefits. Get back to me.

The specification in the programming problem says every participant must be matched. What about countries with only 1 participant signed up who is not willing to ship internationally? I don't see that case in the spec. Does that mean they must ship internationally and their preferences violated? Is this a trick and I already failed the application?